One of the key challenges in the communications industry today is how to provide a cost effective, broadband solution for getting multiple services, such as telephony, video, and high speed data, to users in such diverse premises as homes and business buildings. The existing telephone service, sometimes known as plain old telephone service (POTS), may suffice for some telephony and data requirements, but is bandwidth constrained and inadequate for more demanding services like video provisioning. Cable television (CATV) systems do provide a broadband solution for delivering digital and video data, but the reliance on coaxial cable for the final distribution to homes and other premises remains a bandwidth limited solution. Thus, because of the superior bandwidth of fiber optic solutions, a variety of systems have been proposed to provide fiber to the home/business (FTTH/B) as the best overall solution for broadband services.
The leading FTTH/B solutions rely on passive optical networks (PONs), in which the optical network is terminated at the premises in some form of optical network terminator (ONTs). However, one problem present in today's solutions for coupling the optical networks, via the ONTs, to local premises networks, is the expense and complication of providing trained technicians with the necessary set-up equipment for the given installation. In a typical telephony installation, technicians carry a general technician toolkit to install cables (phone lines) and a simple BUTT set to test these phone lines. More is required in a FTTH/B installation, though, so more specialized tools and training are required to roll out these new services. These tools have included PDAs (personal digital assistants) or even laptop computers, for handling specialized functions like system registration and a suite of test functionality. These existing solutions are both more costly and time consuming.
Thus, there remains a need for a simpler, more cost effective and efficient solution for installing and testing broadband (e.g., optical) and local premises networks. Just such a solution to these and other problems noted above, is made possible by my invention.